THIS WEEKEND Families
ruled over the Easter holiday frame as the G-rated laughs of the Dr. Suess
toon Horton Hears A Who once again
proved to be the most popular game in town. The Fox hit spent a second
week at number one and fended off competition from a handful of new films.
Among the new releases, films with multicultural casts delivered the most
impressive averages. Tyler Perry's latest hit Meet
the Browns bowed in second place while the Latino drama Under
the Same Moon opened in limited release but was still strong
enough to crack the top ten. Each pic averaged more than $10,000. The spookfest
Shutter and the bodyguard comedy Drillbit
Taylor were met with lukewarm openings and landed in the top
five. Overall, it was the worst Easter weekend box office in three years.

The vocal talents of Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell led Horton
to $24.6M in ticket sales this weekend, according to final
studio figures, and represented a rather sizable 45% decline. The animated
comedy was helped by the Good Friday holiday but still posted a larger
sophomore drop than other non-sequel March toons from Fox and Blue Sky
Studios. 2002's Ice Age fell 35% while
Robots dropped 42% in 2005. Plus neither
film had any Easter help on the sophomore session. After ten days of release,
Horton has taken in a solid $86M which
is just 2% behind Ice Age at the same
point in its release but 30% ahead of Robots.
Given the elephant pic's warm reception with critics and audiences, the
relative lack of new competitors, and the holiday, a smaller decline was
expected. But despite the big drop, the Seuss extravaganza still should
finish its domestic run in the neighborhood of $150M.

Tyler Perry secured the runnerup spot with his latest effort Meet
the Browns which opened to $20.1M. The filmmaker's fifth release
in four years enjoyed the second highest per-theater average of any film
in the top ten with a robust $10,011 from 2,006 locations. The PG-13 film
stars Angela Bassett and debuted in the same range as Perry's last film
Why Did I Get Married? which bowed
to $21.4M last October from a similar number of theaters. It did not have
the Good Friday holiday to help its opening weekend though.

Opening a little better than expected, Fox's horror flick Shutter
debuted in third with $10.4M from 2,753 sites. The remake of a Thai fright
hit averaged a mediocre $3,795 and played to a young female audience. The
studio kept the marketing volume low until the final week before release
when it made an aggressive push at its target demo. Joshua Jackson stars
in Shutter as an American photographer
in Tokyo who discovers haunting images in his snapshots. Reviews were dismal.

Owen Wilson's latest comedy Drillbit Taylor
posted a mild opening in fourth place taking in $10.3M from 3,056 theaters.
Averaging just $3,374 per site, the PG-13 pic about a bum hired by nerdy
high school freshmen to be a bodyguard played to a tween and teen audience.
Reviews were negative for the Paramount release which proved that without
other major stars at his side (Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Jackie Chan),
Owen Wilson is no sure thing at the box office.

The caveman flick 10,000 BC ranked
fifth with $8.9M, down 47%, for a cume to date of $76.4M for Warner Bros.
Summit's first in-house production Never Back
Down dropped an acceptable 44% in its second weekend and grossed
$4.8M. With $16.8M collected in ten days, the $20M fight pic looks to reach
roughly $25M by the end of its theatrical run.

Disney's family comedy College Road Trip
slipped 40% to $4.7M in its third frame and raised its tally to $32.1M.
Moviegoers continued to spread good word-of-mouth for the Jason Statham
heist actioner The Bank Job which dipped
only 17% to $4.2M for a $19.5M total. The Lionsgate release posted the
smallest decline in the top ten two weeks in a row. Yet another action
film followed in ninth with Sony's Vantage Point
which took in $3.8M, down just 30%, for a $65.3M cume.

The immigration drama Under the Same Moon
debuted to strong numbers in limited release and landed in the top ten
right at the ten spot. The Weinstein Company's PG-13 film grossed $2.8M
from only 266 locations and averaged a sturdy $10,414 per site. It scored
the best average in the Top 20 edging out Meet
the Browns. Since its Wednesday launch, the Sundance Film Festival
audience favorite and its mostly Latino cast has taken in a solid $3.5M.
Fox Searchlight marketed the Spanish-language title while Weinstein handled
distribution duties.

The top ten films grossed $94.7M which was down 10% from last year's
Easter frame when Blades of Glory led
the field with $22.5M; and down 12% from 2006's holiday when Scary
Movie 4 debuted in the top spot with $40.2M.

This column is updated three times each week:
Thursday
(upcoming weekend's summary), Sunday
(post-weekend analysis with estimates), and Monday
night (actuals). Opinions expressed in this column are those solely of
the author.